In search of an identity: the Muslims and football in colonial India

Abstract

This essay deals with soccer’s burgeoning communal encounter in India from the 1930s, which began to erode football’s overwhelming status as an instrument of cultural nationalism. It intends to show that this trend can be meaningfully explained only in terms of socio‐political and economic life of India in the 1930s. The unhealthy clash between the Hindu bhadrolok dominated Indian Football Association and the Mohammedan Sporting Club, representative of the minority Muslim community, often played a critical role in this unhealthy contest, creating possibilities of communalization of sport in the 1930s and 1940s. This communal conflict in Indian football also explains why the first Indian team Mohun Bagan’s victory of the IFA Shield in 1911 is still perceived as a greater nationalistic triumph than Mohammedan Sporting Club’s five straight Calcutta Football League titles between 1934 and 1938. Mohammedan’s success had a visibly mixed impact on Indian footballing society. For the majority of the minority Muslims, Mohammedan Sporting Club had become a symbol of identity and confidence all over India. In fact, while the contribution of the Mohammedan Sporting Club in making the Muslim League popular in Bengal was not insignificant, the Muslim League also played an important role in promoting the club. On the other hand, the factors influencing the gradual marginalization of the club from the Indian sporting scenario in the 1940s also throws light on the association between minority politics, communalism and sport in the Indian context. As the essay argues, it was the oppositional perception of identity of two communities in a tense socio‐political context of Bengal, which led to the fracture of footballing nationalism from the 1930s.